Pharmaceuticals in our Drinking Water

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We need to take serious the EPA's plan of action for PFA's in our water supply.

 Last week the EPA had a webinar regarding its proposed regulations for municipal water providers regarding the contamination of our water supply from PFA/PFO's.  Manufactured chemicals that have been used in industry and consumer products since the 1940's.  PFA's tend to break down extremely slowly in the environment and can build up in people, animals, trees, plants and environment in whole.  The EPA states that over a long period of time PFAS may: Lead to negative health effects on pregnant  women and in developing babies.  Lead to increase risk of some cancers and liver damage.  Lead to elevated cholesterol levels.  DRINKING water is one major way people are becoming exposed. NOW we have different PFAS in our drinking water that the EPA is identifying.  They find that several different types of PFAS are mixing together. The EPA is proposing a National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (NPDWR) to establish legally enforceable levels, calle...
Read more

Pharmaceuticals in Water

Image
  There is a growing concern about the occurrence of pharmaceuticals in water bodies and in drinking water. Pharmaceuticals get into the water supply via human excretion and by drugs being flushed down the toilet. You might think wastewater treatment plants would take care of the situation, but pharmaceuticals pass through water treatment.   Pharmaceuticals in Water Source of pharmaceuticals in streams   In a 2004 to 2009 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study, scientists found that pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities can be a significant source of pharmaceuticals to the environment. Effluents from two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) that receive discharge from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities (PMFs) had 10 to 1,000 times higher concentrations of pharmaceuticals than effluents from 24 WWTPs across the nation that do not receive PMF discharge. The release waters from these two WWTPs were discharged to streams where the measured pharmaceuticals were tr...
Read more

The Plan To Remove PFAS

 After listening to the plan from the EPA on how to remove the forever chemicals listed in the umbrella of PFAS, its clear the municipal water districts will have a hell of a time complying with the new regulations. The proposed National Primary Drinking Water Regulation  is allowing the EPA to enforce its new standards for regulating the PFAS contamination in our drinking water supply.  This is all well and good, until you look at the ways and means to actually remove the contaminate.  On a large Municipal water supply, you can have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of customers.  The water Volume alone in a five inch or eight inch water main is tremendous.  With the high volume and flow rates, the size of the filter or the amount of media would be in the range of a half a million plus cubic feet.  Ok, lets back up a bit. One effective way to remove the PFAS from your water supply is anion resin.  This most cost effective with its regene...
Read more